When the patient can’t breathe, and you can’t think: The emergency department life-threatening asthma flowsheet

Another case report demonstrates the utility of dissociative-dose ketamine in the deteriorating asthmatic. Life-threatening asthma is uncommon and difficult to study; we may never have better evidence and it’s time to add ketamine to the kitchen sink. This flowsheet incorporates ketamine into a stepwise approach to the severe asthmatic for the emergency clinician who may not remember drip rates and vent settings when her own heart rate is 140.